# Gas Mask *The modern gas mask grew from Black invention: Garrett Morgan’s 1914 safety hood was a commercially sold smoke and gas respirator, proven in a 1916 tunnel rescue, then suppressed in the marketplace once buyers saw its Black creator.* > Black's Encyclopedia — the sourced record of Black American life. > Portal: Science & Invention · Status: In review · Revised: July 21, 2026 · Revisions: 1 > Canonical: https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/gas-mask ## Questions this record answers - Did a Black inventor help create the modern gas mask? - What was Garrett Morgan’s safety hood, and how did it work? - How did Morgan’s role in the 1916 Cleveland tunnel rescue affect the gas mask’s history? - Why were orders for Morgan’s safety hood cancelled when buyers learned he was Black? ## Summary The gas mask used in war and industry stands on the work of Garrett A. Morgan, a Black inventor whose 1914 “safety hood” was a purpose‑built smoke and gas respirator sold years before World War I. His hood was not a flimsy curiosity: it was a carefully engineered breathing device that drew air from near the floor, filtered it, and allowed rescuers to survive in smoke‑filled tunnels and buildings long enough to pull others out. In July 1916, when an explosion ripped through a tunnel under Lake Erie near Cleveland, Morgan and his brothers donned his safety hoods and went into the poisoned shaft, helping bring multiple trapped workers back alive and retrieving bodies that others could not reach. The same event that proved his device’s power also exposed his race: once news photographs and reporting made clear that the inventor and rescuer was a Black man, white departments that had placed or promised orders cancelled them rather than adopt a life‑saving technology from a Black source. ## The archive's standing The archive holds the gas mask as an object materially shaped by Black engineering and courage, not just by military procurement. Garrett Morgan’s safety hood sits at the turning point when smoke and gas protection moved from improvised cloths to designed, mass‑market respirators, and he proved its worth by walking into lethal conditions that others would not face. We regard his hood as foundational to the gas mask’s modern form and as a case study in how anti‑Black racism narrowed which inventions entered official histories. The cancelled orders after the tunnel rescue are not marginal anecdotes; they are evidence that the market would rather forgo protection than accept Black authorship, and that erasure, not lack of merit, explains why Morgan’s hood is often treated as a “side story” instead of central infrastructure. As a result, the archive holds the gas mask as a Black‑shaped technology whose mainstream story has been stripped of the inventor’s race and the commercial sabotage that followed his public heroism. ## Object and Function A **gas mask** is a wearable breathing device designed to protect the wearer from inhaling harmful smoke, gases, and particulates, often by drawing air from a safer zone and passing it through filters before it reaches the lungs. Long before self‑contained breathing apparatuses became standard, such devices relied on shaping the air path—where air was taken in, how it moved, and how it was cleaned—to keep rescuers and workers alive in dangerous environments. Garrett Morgan’s 1914 **safety hood and smoke protector** was one of the first commercially produced respirators in the United States built specifically for this purpose. It consisted of a hood that covered the head and shoulders, a long hose that extended downward toward the floor, and a filter or reservoir that cooled and cleaned incoming air. By placing the intake near the ground, where smoke concentration is often lower, and by forcing the air through absorbing materials, Morgan’s device allowed wearers to breathe long enough to work in burning buildings, tunnels, and other smoke‑filled spaces. It was not a military‑issue World War I gas mask with sealed facepiece and chemical cartridges, but it performed the same core function: protecting human lungs from lethal atmospheres. ## The Safety Hood: Design, Patent, and Use Morgan patented his **safety hood** in October 1914, securing United States Patent No. 1,109,067 for a device that improved on earlier smoke protectors by combining a hood, a floor‑level intake tube, and filtering elements in a simple, affordable design that could be donned quickly. He formed the National Safety Device Company to manufacture and market the hood, targeting fire departments, rescue squads, and industrial users who needed reliable protection in smoke and gas emergencies. Contemporary descriptions and surviving diagrams show a layered approach: the hood fit over the head and shoulders to keep out smoke; the intake hose ran down the body and could be held or pinned near the floor; air passed through a container or pad treated to absorb contaminants before reaching the wearer’s mouth and nose. Morgan demonstrated the hood at public exhibitions by entering smoke‑filled tents and remaining inside while white assistants watched; in at least one widely reported stunt, he hired a white actor to pose as the “inventor” while he presented himself as the assistant, because he had already learned that white customers would not believe or buy from a Black inventor. ## The 1916 Lake Erie Tunnel Rescue On the night of July 24–25, 1916, an explosion in a tunnel being excavated under Lake Erie near Cleveland released toxic gases and smoke, trapping workers deep underground. Initial rescue attempts by crews without protective equipment failed; several would‑be rescuers were themselves overcome by fumes. When city officials and company representatives realized that conventional methods were failing, they turned to Morgan’s safety hood. Morgan and his brothers arrived at the site with a small stock of hoods and volunteered to go down themselves. Wearing the safety hoods he had designed, they descended into the tunnel and were able to breathe well enough to locate survivors, bring multiple injured workers out, and retrieve bodies that had been left behind. Their actions were reported in Black and white newspapers alike as acts of conspicuous bravery and proof that Morgan’s device worked in a real disaster, not just staged demonstrations. For this rescue, he received medals and formal commendations, but he did not receive the full commercial recognition that such a proof of concept should have generated. ## Orders, Racism, and Erasure Before the Lake Erie disaster, Morgan had already secured interest from fire departments and industrial buyers who had seen his demonstrations. Some had placed orders or agreed in principle to purchase safety hoods for their crews. After the tunnel rescue, the same event that publicized his invention also revealed him clearly as a Black man: photographs, interviews, and community coverage made his identity impossible to obscure. According to Black‑authored accounts and later scholarship, once white buyers realized the “Morgan Safety Hood” was the product of a Black inventor, many withdrew or cancelled their orders rather than adopt a device associated with Black authorship. Morgan’s necessity in hiring a white actor to pose as the inventor in earlier demonstrations was part of the same pattern—the marketplace and municipal departments did not treat his race as incidental; they treated it as disqualifying. Where the official record speaks of “slow adoption” or “limited sales,” the archive reads behind that phrasing the documented reality that anti‑Black racism, not technical inadequacy, constrained the spread of a proven life‑saving technology. This commercial sabotage had a double effect. It depressed Morgan’s revenues and helped keep the safety hood from becoming the default standard in fire and industrial rescue, even though it had worked under Lake Erie. It also contributed to the later framing of the gas mask’s history as primarily a story of European military research during World War I, with Morgan’s hood mentioned as a “precursor” or “forerunner” rather than a central, marketed artifact in its own right. That displacement—shifting Black invention to the margins while centering white institutions—is part of the erasure the archive corrects. ## From Safety Hood to Gas Mask When armies confronted poison gas on European battlefields after 1915, they moved quickly to develop masks that would protect soldiers from chlorine, phosgene, and other chemical weapons. Engineers and chemists in Britain, France, Germany, and later the United States designed facepieces and filter canisters that could survive prolonged exposure in trenches. The mainstream telling begins the gas mask there, as an almost purely military technology. Morgan’s safety hood predates these wartime masks and demonstrates that American engineers, including Black inventors, were already thinking rigorously about how to keep people alive in smoke and gas emergencies. His device, marketed to fire and industrial users rather than armies, showed the viability of combining a hood, controlled air intake, and filtration in a commercially produced respirator. Later gas masks refined the seal around the face, improved chemicals in the filters, and adapted straps and materials for battlefield use, but they did not invent the idea of a practical, wearable smoke and gas respirator from scratch. For the archive, the line from the **safety hood** to the **gas mask** is direct: Morgan’s design is not merely an “inspiration” but part of the concrete technological ancestry of modern respiratory protection. The fact that war departments and industrial firms did not widely credit or contract with him is explained by race and by the legal and social barriers that kept Black inventors from full participation in procurement, not by any lack of contribution. Recognizing that ancestry restores Black authorship to a technology that has saved countless lives across fires, mines, factories, and battlefields. ## What the Safety Hood Was—and Was Not The safety hood was a **breathing device**, a **smoke and gas respirator**, and an early **gas mask** in functional terms: it allowed wearers to survive in atmospheres that would otherwise overwhelm them, using design and filtration rather than mere luck or speed. It was sold as professional equipment, used in actual rescues, and demonstrated repeatedly to skeptical audiences. In this sense, it belongs squarely in the lineage of gas masks and modern personal protective equipment. It was not, however, the final form of the gas mask that militaries standardized a few years later. Morgan’s hood did not employ the rigid facepiece and replaceable chemical filter cartridges that became common in trench warfare; its intake strategy focused on drawing air from less contaminated zones near the floor. Nor did it resolve all future design problems of fit, seal, and long‑term comfort. To claim he single‑handedly invented every later gas mask would be to overreach and flatten the real story of cumulative engineering. The archive instead names his precise accomplishment: he designed, patented, manufactured, and personally proved a commercially available smoke and gas respirator that stood as a forerunner and practical prototype for later gas masks. He did so as a Black inventor operating in a market structured to deny him customers once his identity was known, and he risked his life in a 1916 tunnel so others could breathe. That combination of technical ingenuity and embodied courage is part of what the gas mask is, even when official histories neglect to say so. ## Sources 1. Garrett A. Morgan, “Safety Hood and Smoke Protector,” U.S. Patent No. 1,109,067, issued October 13, 1914 (National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.) 2. Charles W. Carey Jr., American Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Business Visionaries, Facts On File, 2007, chapter on Garrett A. Morgan 3. Rayvon Fouché, Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003 (context on Black inventors and procurement barriers) 4. “Garrett Morgan: Inventor of the Safety Hood and the Three-Light Traffic Signal,” in STEM Pioneers, Idaho Open Press (pressbooks edition), c.2020 5. “Garrett A. Morgan: Traffic Signal and Gas Mask Inventor,” Black Inventor Online Museum, accessed 2020 6. “Garrett Morgan and His Invention Saved Lives in Cleveland,” Biography.com, A&E Networks, 2023 ## Related records - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/garrett-morgan - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/traffic-light - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/firefighting - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/industrial-safety - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/cleveland-ohio --- Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "Gas Mask," revised July 21, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/gas-mask Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.